Goodnight Irene

All times through paradise and even 2015

On Sept. 18, exactly three months before his 72nd birthday, Keith Richards released Crosseyed Heart. Two decades-plus had elapsed since his sophomore solo quake, Main Offender. As Netflix tie-in Keith Richards: Under the Influence informs to the guitar god himself, he's now outlived the bluesman whose song "Rollin' Stone" titled his UK combo – Muddy Waters.

Balladry from "Ruby Tuesday" to "Beast of Burden" remains Richards' compositional specialty, so Crosseyed Heart countrifies new backstabber "Robbed Blind" and calls in Norah Jones for a lovelorn reality check, "Illusion." Neither holds a candelabra to "Goodnight Irene." A traditional folk-blues, Louisiana-born, Texas-bred recidivist Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter made it his own in 1933.

Where fellow Sixties big banger Bob Dylan inhabits Sinatra on Shadows in the Night from the far end of a May/December timeline, Richards rockets back 40 years to one of the blackest chapters of his Life. Detained in Toronto for hoarding heroin, the poster Brit for rock & roll's bumper sticker slogan faced certain jail time. To cope, he holed up in a studio with sixth Stone Ian Stewart.

In fact, "Goodnight Irene" skirts a half-century of Marlboro abuse back past even his late-Seventies incarceration scare to some musical immaculateness. Teenhood revisited somehow. Keith Richards through all time in a single tune.

When Swedish death metal art merchants Tribulation spooked Mohawk the week after Fun Fun Fun Fest, best hair-raiser "Melancholia" summoned Seventies UK bullet train UFO as sure as Odin ordered Scandinavian church burnings. That proved a synchronistic bookend to the OBN IIIs on the same stage days earlier during a FFF Nites opening slot for which they flexed new fusillade "Let the Music," perfect paean to Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott.

Did Courtney Barnett reincarnate a sliver of Cobain? Will Kendrick Lamar be to hip-hop what Miles Davis was for jazz – fusionist? Can Grupo Fantasma become Tito Puente worldwide?

No great act creates any art other than its own, but root circles remain unbroken in the grimacing face of pop vacuity and global calamity.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 36 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.